Special News & Commentaries from Kurdistan

Monday, July 05, 2004

Blame shifting

With a push from a certain kurdo, I have decided to give this a try. Hopefully all the commentators can join in here at some point because there are some really good voices out there.
Anyway this works better cos I do want to comment on the Halabja topic from Kurdo’s blog without having to cut everything into 1000 word chunks, especially for something as detailed (and often dull) as this. So here we go.

I’d hate to start with death as a first theme but this Iran-Halabja thing has been going on for a while, I’ve been ignoring it but it seems to have only have gotten stronger. It is same garbage that saddams ‘lawyers’ (use this term veeerry loosely) are going to use to defend him.
And to be frank it’s very offensive, especially for something like Halabja which we know happened and a lot of Kurds have seen with their own eyes. It’s like telling holocaust survivors that the holocaust was ‘a little nasty thing’ by the Russians, get over it you cant blame everything on poor shitler.

Halabja was not an isolated event it was part of the Anfal campaign (February-September 1988), in fact it wasn’t the only city gassed. The ever trusty US state department mentions in 2001 on the 13th year anniversary of Halabja that:
“Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons attack on Halabja was not an isolated incident. It was part of a systematic campaign ordered by Saddam Hussein and led by his lieutenant, Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous "Chemical Ali," against Iraqi Kurdish civilians”Halabja has now become more a symbol of the Anfal campaign because it was the only event that was widely documented. The actual gassing started the year before

The chemical agents cyanide, mustard gas and nerve gas were used by saddam against the Iranians as early as 1983 but he started using them on the Kurds in 1987, the most noted city was balisan valley a village with a population of 1750. This was followed later by Sheikh Wasam (which was later dynamited and bulldozed), Goktapa, Askar, Qalat Diza and later Halabja.

Now what I don’t get is that the Anfal campaign is the envisionment of the Baath party’s twisted ideologies and all its actions had the similar bloody signature, how did Iran manage to get into this for just one city. Did they just show up for the day, do their little gig and leave. Hell their army were no angles and they did seize the city of Halabja before as they did with other bordering villages, but how did they manage to get hold of exactly the same chemicals saddam used on other cities, get on a plane and gas the place. Also we have no details available regarding names and procedures leading up to the event from Iran, while in Iraq we probably have a bio of the pilot of the plane, chemical ali's statements and official files regarding how to achieve the 'final solution' Plus why would saddam’s generals send him telegraphs of a job well done in quelling the ‘enemies of Iraq’’ or why would saddam glorify this moment for himself, a little low on self esteem was he. Anyway one benefit form the Baath party was that they were bureaucrats galore; everything was documented on paper and video, hence the tons of evidence available against saddam and his regime.

What else would explain the mass slaughter of civilians, the destruction of 4,500 villages, the deportation, ‘processing stations’ and the concentration camps. I won’t go into any detail regarding those as I doubt I will be able to go through them but a summarized version of all that is available here and detailed report from human rights watch

And now the cretin and his fellow cretinettes that committed all this are at the docks. I was disappointed with the way the trial was reported but now I’m thinking let all his supporters from wherever they are speak and scream all they want for their beloved leader it is not doing them any good. The truth is bound to come and if the trial is able to show the story through the eyes of saddams victims then it would definitely be a success.